Manas: Prologue

Manas: Prologue is a story-driven 3D action RPG set in a semi-open world, based on the Kyrgyz epic Manas. It is a narrative game first: the point is to make the epic something you move through rather than something you are told about.

Manas is the largest epic in the world — recognised as such by Guinness World Records — and is inscribed on UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. It is the first part of a trilogy: Manas, Semetey, Seytek. This is not obscure material at home; it is the central text of Kyrgyz culture, and it has never had a game that treats it seriously.

Telling the whole epic is years of work, and pretending otherwise would be the fastest way to deliver nothing. So the plan is to release in parts, and the first part is the prologue: a contained, finished piece of the story rather than a promise of everything. Scope decided honestly is the only reason a project this size gets to exist at all.

I do the research myself, using Scribe — the tool I built for exactly this kind of volume. Canon, vocabulary and historical detail come in part from two books by my father, and in part from the recorded versions of the epic. The aim is a game that a Kyrgyz player recognises as accurate and a player who has never heard of Manas can still follow.

In development. No release date is announced, and I will not announce one before it is real. Visuals will be published on this page as they are ready.